France - Banner - Memento Domine – A nos héros morts pour la France - With original medals

A French parish memorial banner made in the years just after the First World War (c. 1919–1925), when nearly every town and village in France was finding its own way to honour its dead.

The central scene is worked in fine silk needle-painting. Christ hangs on the cross. On one side stands the Virgin Mary. On the other, a mourning woman cradles a dying poilu in horizon-blue uniform, with the tricolour, his Adrian helmet and his sword beside him. The rest of the banner is in raised metal-thread embroidery: oak and laurel branches, scrolls and lettering. The three lower lobes show embroidered versions of the Médaille militaire, the Légion d'honneur and the Croix de guerre. Seven hanging tabs, bullion fringe.

What sets this banner apart is the combination. Most surviving procession banners are purely religious. Here a soldier of the Great War is placed at the foot of the cross, as one of the mourned. That is a much rarer subject.

On two of the lobes, a real decoration hangs beside its embroidered counterpart: a full-size Médaille militaire in silver, enamel and gilt (Third Republic type, reverse "Valeur et Discipline"), and a full-size bronze Croix de guerre with the wartime reverse date 1914–1917, its ribbon carrying a bronze star for a citation at regiment or brigade level. A chain of seven miniatures has also been attached, together reading like one veteran's service record. They are the Médaille militaire, the Croix de guerre 1914–1918, the wounded insignia (red enamel star), the Inter-Allied Victory Medal, the 1914–1918 Commemorative Medal, the Verdun Medal with "VERDUN" clasp and the Croix du combattant. That last one was only instituted in 1930, so the decorations were added to the banner later, most likely by the veteran himself or his family. A wounded Verdun soldier, remembered beneath a banner for the fallen.

On the reverse are embroidered verses from Victor Hugo's "Écrit au bas d'un crucifix" (Les Contemplations, 1856).

Condition: worn as you would expect after a century. The silk has split in places, mainly in the Virgin's robe and in the ground beneath the soldier. There are stains, flattened velvet, a seam or tear in the velvet on the reverse and tarnished metal thread. The Croix de guerre ribbon is frayed with a few small holes. The scene itself remains clear and colourful. Please see the detail photos.
Photos are part of the description.

Shipped rolled, never folded, around a tube packed in a sturdy box.